Pasta, Pasta! Chicken Sausage Alfredo

The best thing about pasta is it is quick! And when you can put together with a quick homemade sauce and an easy add-in it is also delicious. The quick light Alfredo recipe I discovered from before went great with sun dried tomato chicken sausage and fresh fettuccine!

Quick Meal: Chicken and Spinach Alfredo Pasta

Remember my Steal of the Week on an Easy Alfredo? I decided to try something different with the same basic sauce. I had left over rotisserie chicken from the chicken and herb white pizza and wanted to use it in something other than my usual Mexican ventures and this unusually warm Fall weather is not calling for chicken soup. I thought why not add it to the Alfredo sauce but better yet get a little green in there too and we always have frozen spinach on hand!

I started by adding the spinach and fresh garlic to the melted butter used to make the sauce. Once the spinach was heated through I added the cream cheese:

Next the milk, black pepper and I used the last of our parmigiano reggiano:

While the sauce heated and thickened, I cooked a bag of our favorite Wacky Mac pasta and added the hot cooked pasta to the sauce:

The finished meal was quick, simple and tasty and made leftovers to freeze for work lunches:

This has really become my go-to way to make Alfredo and by using light butter, reduced fat cream cheese and 2% milk...it is even better for you than the light Alfredo sold in the store!

Steal of the Week: Quick and Easy (And tasty!) Alfredo Sauce

Inspiration can come from the strangest places. I was sitting in the courthouse for jury duty..yep, Jury Duty-the reason your Cook Crook has been so quiet lately! Combine an ENTIRE WEEK of jury duty with a holiday weekend that included a party I threw for my husband’s 40th birthday and returning to work after said time off and the result is absolutely no blogging, and frankly very little cooking! But, I did stumble across a little reader submitted recipe idea in a woman’s magazine (and if I could tell you which one I would) that mentioned creating a quick alfredo sauce from cream cheese, milk and parmesan! When I got home, and couldn’t remember the magazine I saw it in (and was scared to rip out said page from the magazine WHILE IN A COURTHOUSE) I decided to go to my very trusty online recipe reference: AllRecipes.com

And there it was, Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce a very easy I-have-every-ingredient-in-my-house-already recipe. The changes I made were to use the Neufchatel cheese, skim milk and light butter. 

The question was what to go with it?

I started with my new favorite prepared meat: Al Fresco sausage. These chicken sausages are so delicious and come in some great flavors. I had a package of the spinach and feta sausages on hand! And my herbs are doing grand so I picked some fresh Italian basil and parsley and made a little herb blend.

I sliced the sausages and added them to a cooked bag of another favorite Wacky Mac pasta! 

Tossed with the finished alfredo sauce and sprinkled with the fresh herbs, a delicious meal!

This is going on my list of company meals. It makes a ton, it's delicious and I don't believe anyone would ever know how lighter on calories it really was. This sauce recipe is a keeper for sure!